


Circumstances

by glassfrog



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Friends With Benefits, Hurt/Comfort, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, Porn with Feelings, Post-Operation Pitfall (Pacific Rim), Sex Toys, Switching, it's complicated - Freeform, submissive top
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-10 04:27:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20521919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glassfrog/pseuds/glassfrog
Summary: It was Newt who suggested the handcuffs.





	Circumstances

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: This story contains implied past bad BDSM practices, the details of which are open to interpretation.

At the end of 2025, following the conclusion of the Kaiju War, nobody with any morals was well-off. The streets of cities from Hong Kong to San Francisco were lined with buildings like broken teeth and glass and piles of rubble. Queues for food and toilet paper in some places were long, and snaked out of grocery shop doors and around corners. People with jobs, nurses and teachers and security guards and salesmen, were often allowed to leave work early on whatever day the delivery trucks came so that they could secure their place in line alongside the home-makers and those whose offices had been destroyed by the likes of Mutavore, Leatherback and Otachi. Electricity and running water had been restored in all but the poorest neighbourhoods. A monument had been built in memory of Stacker Pentecost, Chuck Hansen, the Kaidonovskies, the Wei Tangs, and everyone else. Life carried on.

The Shatterdome was still operational. Mako remained as a self-appointed organiser, living off the last of her military-provided food stamps. Raleigh returned to his parents and younger sister in Alaska, in the house that had become a shrine to his older brother, untouched since the day he was killed. Brightly-coloured mugs with coffee stains sat, dust-coated, on the kitchen worktop and his bedside table. Sheets with superhero prints remained kicked into a messy pile at the foot of his bed.

Hercules Hansen had been AWOL for three months.

Hermann and Newt were in Pennsylvania taking part in talks in the university’s School of Arts and Sciences with a number of former colleagues who had contributed to the jaeger programme before denouncing the doctors Gottlieb and Geiszler as arrogant, insufferable, and quite possibly mad. They sat across a packed auditorium from one another, Hermann in scratchy tweed and Newton with his ever-expanding tattoos against a formidable row of grey-suited, grey-faced scientists who did very little to hide their contempt when a question about methods, rules and postulates fanned into a heated debate between the two eccentrics, who were able to argue anywhere, including the middle of a brightly-lit stage. They had already argued at Stanford, the California Institute of Technology, and a number of other American universities that had been spared destruction.

Newt paid $800 a month for a furnished flat fifteen minutes from the university, which he kept in disarray. Hermann occupied the ground-floor of a tall, detached house that had once been a spiritualist church. The landlady, a middle-aged widow, lived on the attic floor. The rooms above Hermann were inhabited by a Polish legal secretary and her husband, and a handsome medical student in his late twenties who lived on expensive gifts from a number of older men and women.

Newt was a regular visitor at the renovated church and dumped his dirty Doc Martens in the shared porch with Hermann’s neighbours’ umbrellas and raincoats. The whole building was carpeted, and his landlady was obsessive about keeping her floors free of scuffs, to the point where the no-shoes-indoors rule was written into her contracts. Hermann kept his second-hand car parked in a nearby garage which he rented for a small monthly fee. He had allowed Newt to ride with him to and from the auditorium, but he seemed oddly bothered by the worn tyres and the large dent in the rear bumper (acquired in an accident that was not Hermann’s fault), and had invested in an extra helmet for Hermann to wear on the back of his moped.

They had been sleeping together for three months. Following the drift, the need to transform their connection into something physical had seemed only natural. It was not a topic of discussion, and aside from their frequent meetings, their relationship had barely changed.

It had been Newt who suggested the handcuffs. It was how he came to be on his knees on Hermann’s linen bedspread, hands held together at the small of his back, offering Hermann easy access as the rings of metal coated in fake black fur clicked with finality around his tense wrists.

“Eyes closed,” Hermann ordered. He placed the silk blindfold over his face.

Newt inhaled sharply.

"Are you alright?"

Newt nodded, strands of hair stuck with sweat to his crumpled forehead. Hermann watched him slowly creep into the crevices of his mind. His shoulders shivered with every quickening breath. Hermann took his face into his hands and drew him close; a frantic burst of air escaped him and he struggled against his bonds, taking in huge, useless gulps of air that caught on the lump in his throat. Hermann yanked the blindfold up to his forehead. Newt’s eyes were wide open and wild underneath, rings of white streaked with red visible all around his greenish irises. “I’m here,” he said.

“My glasses,” Newt gasped. Hermann picked them up and put them on him. He laughed hysterically, trying to get Hermann to laugh along with him, and carried on smiling even when he didn’t, with the desperation of a sparrow lurking still as air in its nest until it can stand it no longer, and flies blind with fear into the hawk’s waiting claws. He nudged his forehead against Hermann’s chest.

“Can I just suck your dick?” he whispered.

Hermann turned him around and started to unlock the handcuffs around his wrists.

“What’re you doing? Don’t do that! Forget I said anything.”

“Would you like to use the safe word?”

“No! It’s cool. It’s _fine.” _He refused to budge his wrists from where they crossed at his back. “Cuff me. You can gag me if you want. It’s a great offer, dude, going once-”

“It’s tempting, Newton, but I’d really rather not.”

“Going twice!” Newt’s softening erection hung limply across his thigh.

"Stop it.”

“I’d let you hit me.”

“That’s enough,” Hermann said. “_I’m _ using the safe word. Farenheit”

“Why? Don’t do that! I want to do it.”

“Do you really?”

Newt stroked Hermann’s waning hard-on clumsily with a sweaty palm. Hermann watched grimly as it shrank into his hand, a sad, pink mushroom.

“I don’t think I’m going to get there,” he said.

“Just relax. I’ve got this.”

“No, it’s gone. Stop, you’re chafing me.”

“You want me to suck it?”

“I don’t really feel like it any more.”

They put their clothes back on in silence.

“Sorry I made it weird,” Newt said.

Sitting down on the bed beside him, Hermann hovered his hand awkwardly about Newt’s shoulders, as if he was hugging his shadow. “Would you like me to…?”

“No, s’cool. I’m gonna take a leak.”

He scooted out of the room. Hermann pulled on his socks and walked into the dark hallway. A sliver of light shone from underneath the bathroom door on the left. Hermann took a right into the living room, which backed onto a communal patio through a large glass door. Somebody had put up solar-powered lanterns in the garden, which glowed dimly in the fading sun.

Hermann switched on a lamp and drew the blinds. Behind him, he heard Newt creep into the room, and for a few seconds pretended he hadn’t. He despised awkward, emotional conversations. Turning briskly, he hobbled over to Newt and took him into his arms. Newt’s breath hitched and he threw his arms around Hermann’s middle and buried his face in his shirt. Hermann lifted his head with a finger under his chin. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.

“Scare me?” Newt repeated. He grabbed Hermann’s hips and ground against him, kissed him and chewed on his lower lip as Hermann stood like a shop dummy with his hands twitching with uncertainty at his side. Newt breathed hotly against his ear. “Wanna go back to the bedroom and fuck me ‘til I bleed?”

“What on earth is the matter with you?” Hermann demanded.

“What’s the matter with_ you!” _Newt shot back. “What’s your problem? Why won’t you let me do this for you? I know you’re into it.”

“Why do you_ want _to do it for me?”

“Oh, maybe, I don’t know! I come over here, you fuck me, I leave! Maybe I wanted to spice things up a bit. Maybe I didn’t want things to get boring!”

“Are you bored?”

“No.”

“Because nobody is forcing you to be here!”

“I said no! Why did you ask me if you weren’t going to listen?” Newt paced furiously around the living room, throwing his arms about as he often did when his feelings became too big for him and he ran out of space to put them. “You think I can’t handle it, is that it? Think I haven’t done this before?”

Hermann followed him on his cane.

“Now see here!” he said. With effort, he softened his voice. “You didn’t look like you were enjoying yourself.”

“I could do that!”

“Oh you could? Then tell me, Newton, what else you _ could _ do! Should I gag you, bend you over with your hands cuffed and take you from behind? Verbally humiliate you? Would you like me to make you _bleed _? Would that suit you?”

“A-Anything-” Newt’s lower lip trembled. “Anything you want is fine.”

Hermann pinched the bridge of his nose and felt the beginning of a migraine coming on. “I don’t want to fight about this,” he said.

“We’re already fighting about it.”

Hermann went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. It was a British habit he had picked up during his years at Cambridge, along with a pronounced accent, and he found it suited him. He deposited his emotions with a spoonful of sugar. He took an anticonvulsant from his segmented pill box, marked with each day of the week in black pen, and swallowed it. He popped one of Newt’s mood stabilisers and poured him a glass of water, along with a cup of raspberry and apple-flavoured tea.

“Thanks,” Newt muttered as he handed it to him. Hermann watched him suck on his pill and push it into his cheek with his tongue like a hamster.

“You’ll give yourself chemical burns,” he warned.

Newt sipped on the tea that Hermann had queued for three hours for.

“Should we talk about this?” asked Hermann, with trepidation.

“There’s nothing to talk about. It happened. I let it happen.”

“How old were you?”

“Twenties. Early twenties. I wasn’t a_ kid _.”

“Was it more than once? With a partner? Someone you cared about?”

“I don’t wanna discuss it.”

“Alright, Newton. I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

“Go to hell.”

“Excuse me?” Hermann said. “I didn’t mean to imply-”

“Shut up Hermann, yes you did, you implied! You don’t get to _imply _ shit about my life like that!”

“If you could just make me understand!”

“Why?” Newt shouted. “Why is this so important to you?”

“Because I don’t know what to do!” Hermann yelled back. “I have no idea where to begin. What would you have me do? Do you want me to hold you?”

“No!”

“Then tell me! I want to help you.”

“I don’t need your help. Whatever this is between us, we’re not in a relationship. We have sex, we hang out, we have_ fun. _ Six months and _now _ you wanna talk?"Newt let out a burst of manic laughter. “Forget it. You don’t owe me anything.” He banged his mug down on the coffee table. Hermann winced as a few drops of the sweet tea that wasn’t to his taste anyway overflowed onto the lacquer wood.

“We may not be _together,” _he said, “but we’re friends, aren’t we?”

“I guess,” Newt replied sulkily.

“Oh don’t be like that, you idiot. I’m trying to connect with you emotionally.”

“Smooth, Hermann.” Newt stewed in bitter amusement. He went into the bathroom and emerged a short while later in baggy sweatpants and a plain T-shirt, bare feet and damp hair. Hermann wrapped him in a blanket and brought him to the couch. He curled up with his toes perching over the edge of the seat and Hermann’s shoulder pressed lightly against his own.

Though their unspoken mutual agreement had flowered from a need for sex - sex with each other - it was not unusual for them to delay the act, sometimes for days at a time. A long day when Hermann’s body ached down to his bones could turn quite naturally into the two of them lying side by side, Newt’s arm tucked between the pillow and the back of Hermann’s head, free hand pressed against his chest, feeling the soft hum of his heart against his skin. Newt didn’t hesitate to throw himself on Hermann’s couch with his tatty suit jacket with brown leather patches on the elbows still buttoned up all wrong after a day at the university, and laid his head on Hermann’s knee when they watched the news, or old re-runs of Mystery Science Theatre on his laptop. 

Newt sank silently to his knees in front of Hermann and began to lick and suck his soft dick through his trousers.

“Newton,” Hermann said, stroking the top of his head, “it’s alright.”

Newt fumbled with his belt buckle and fly. Hermann breathed in sharply as his hot, wet mouth engulfed him, and he tightened his fingers in the tufts of his damp hair to move him up and down several times before conceding.

“You can do that all day, it won’t make a bit of difference,” he said. Newt began to clamber onto his lap, grabbing the front of his shirt and furiously kissing his lips, his neck, his jutting collarbone. Hermann was taken aback by the accost, grabbed Newt’s shoulders and pushed him away, and came face to face with wide, beseeching eyes, slightly damp behind misted-up glasses.

“Stand up,” he sighed, “take your clothes off. There now.”

Newt jumped up, threw his T-shirt on the floor and wriggled out of his sweatpants. He was naked underneath. Sitting forward on the sofa, Hermann turned him around and pulled him onto his lap, and settled down with Newt’s back pressed against his chest and his bare ass grinding against his crotch. “You don’t give up do you?”

“You love it, big guy.”

Hermann put his hands on either side of Newt’s waist and stroked him up and down, squeezing his chest and chubby waist.

“Hey!” Newt said. “That’s a sensitive area.”

“It’s one of your least terrible qualities.”

“I’m not hurting you, right?”

“Must you always ask that?”

Hermann put two fingers inside Newt’s mouth.

“Mm, you’re sho bony though.”

“I am not.”

He touched a wet fingertip to the bud of one of Newt’s nipples and felt it harden. He swirled his finger around it and flicked it lazily back and forth. Newt whined and spread his legs.

“What would you like me to do?” Hermann asked.

“You know what.”

“Tell me.”

“Touch me. I don’t care where.”

Hermann took hold of the nipple he was flicking and rolled it between his fingers. “Like this?” he whispered against Newt’s ear, making him shiver. He wriggled in Hermann’s lap.

“Do it more.”

Hermann held the forefinger on his free hand to Newt’s lips. Newt sucked on it eagerly and chased it as Hermann pulled it from his mouth with a pop, and mirrored his earlier movements, pressing it against Newt’s other nipple and watching it pucker, so that both strawberry pink buds poked out from his chest. His dick was painfully hard and flushed against his stomach.

“I hardly touched you,” Hermann said.

“You left me high and dry before.”

Hermann tugged his hard nipples until his hips bucked. The shiny head of his dick left a wet spot in the fuzz on his lower belly as it bounced.

“Aren’t you gonna touch it?”

“I’m not going to unless you tell me.”

Newt growled. “Is this your way of trying to, I dunno, hold my hand through whatever you clearly think has scarred my brain? Or are you just being an asshole?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hermann said, kissing his earlobe. He dragged his finger up the wet patch on Newt’s stomach, pressed his belly button and teased it round and round.

“Ahh, I hate you!” Newt yelled, bouncing up and down. “Shut up, stop laughing at me!”

Hermann hooked one arm under both of Newt’s knees and scooped his legs up to his chest. His hole was still soft and slippery from earlier. Hermann easily slid two fingers inside. Lubricant oozed between his digits and he suspected Newt had added more while he was alone in the bathroom. Newt clamped both hands over his mouth, skewing his glasses over his nose.

“Why are you being shy?” Hermann asked.

“I don’t know! I’m embarrassed. You’ve still got all your clothes on.”

“Do you like it when I hold you like this?”

“Yeah, I like it.”

“Then do help me. My arm’s getting tired.”

Newt held up his legs, allowing Hermann to squeeze soft handfuls of his ass and splayed thighs. With both hands he spread Newt’s cheeks apart, making him gasp, pressed the sensitive rim of his hole with hard, insistent fingers and stretched him. He felt a small trickle of lube spill between his fingertips and drip onto his grey slacks.

“You’re leaking on me,” he admonished.

“Sorry.”

Newt breathed hard as he watched where Hermann’s hands disappeared underneath him, his long fingers dipping in and out of his asshole, never enough to fully breach him but rubbing and stretching until he was soaked with the lube he had pushed into himself. His hard dick, trapped between his stomach and quivering thighs, throbbed and dripped as Hermann tutted in his ear at the obscene squelching noises his body was making. His stomach was wet, and a small pool of pre-come had formed inside his belly button.

“You're shaking. Is this what you wanted me to do?”

“Yeah… do it more, do it properly, Hermann, _please…” _

“There now.”

He sank three fingers deep into him and rubbed the swollen gland through the soft, hot skin of his insides. Newt wailed. The temptation to make him come on his fingers alone, clenching and sobbing from the lack of stimulation to his dick as he squirted helplessly onto his stomach, tugged at the corners of Hermann’s mind. “Shh,” he said, kissing him on the ear, eagerly taking in his soft whimpers as he fingered him.

“Don’t tease me so much,” Newt whispered.

Hermann pulled out his fingers, grabbed his legs beneath the knee and spread him wide apart. Newt’s body jolted out of Hermann’s grip as a lick of cold air brushed his hole. He began to stroke himself desperately, rubbing against Hermann as he straddled his lap.

“Get hard,” he babbled under his breath. “C’mon, c’mon, want it, I want it…”

Hermann gave one of Newt’s plump hips a sympathetic squeeze. He appreciated the effort. Newt collapsed against his back with a huff. Hermann kissed his neck, tilted his chin to the side and licked his lips.

“Would you like me to use the vibrator on you?”

Newt nodded tearfully.

“Go and fetch it, then, and come back here. I’m going to go and get myself ready.”

Hermann went into the bathroom, which was half covered with seafoam-coloured tiles. The rest was painted pale yellow. Newt kept a spare toothbrush, with bristles worn short and spiky from brushing too hard, in the small glass at the side of the sink.

Hermann took personal hygiene very seriously when it came to sex. He prepared himself properly; he thought it very impolite not to do so. When he emerged ten minutes later he found Newt laid back on the sofa with his legs apart, both hands on the curved pink vibrator pressed against his asshole. His dick was flushed scarlet, shiny with pre-cum and twitching pathetically.

“You poor thing,” Hermann said. “Did I keep you waiting?” He ran a finger through the trail of slick on Newt’s stomach and pushed it into his mouth, making him whimper.

“Just fuck me already.”

Newt had a permanent purple bruise the shape of Hermann’s thumb on his right buttock, dark blood brought to the swell of his skin close to his hole where Hermann had grabbed and spread him as he fucked him from behind, watching his dick slide in and out of him. Newt would moan when he pressed it and rock back on him, buttocks and thighs rippling as they slapped against Hermann’s hips. Hermann liked to bring him to orgasm more than once, taking his time teasing him with the tip of his dick before sliding in slowly and deeply, allowing him to feel every tantalising inch, grabbing his wandering hands and pinning them to his sides as he ground into him, making him scream with frustration and come, untouched, all over himself.

Hermann rubbed the bruise on his ass, pinched a soft inch between his thumb and forefinger and spread him. He took the open bottle of lubricant, pressed the nozzle to his hole and squeezed, squirting it deep inside.

“Cold, cold!” Newt gasped. A bead of liquid spurted out of him. Hermann set the vibrator on low and teased him with it, stroking the scorching, slick trail between his open legs until his hips bucked every time it skimmed over his hole, urging Hermann to thrust it inside.

“Hermann, c’mon,” he whined.

“So impatient,” Hermann said. He brushed his fingers up the hard shaft of Newt’s dick and tweaked the tip gently, making him drip onto his stomach. “What do you say?”

“_Aaarrghh!” _ Newt writhed and tried to force himself down on the toy. “Put it in!”

“Do you like it?”

“I like it, I love it - fuck, don’t make me beg for it!”

“Good boy,” Hermann said, sliding the vibrator inside him.

“_Oh fuck,” _ Newt sobbed. “More, please.”

“There isn’t any more.”

Newt began to rut back against the couch.

“Don’t get too excited,” Hermann said with a punishing press on the bruise on Newt’s ass. “Let me lie down, I’d like you on top of me. Be sure to keep it in you, now.”

He took off his trousers, folded them and put them aside as Newt scrambled on top of him. He grabbed the waist of his underwear and yanked them down with such ferocity that Hermann yelped. Spreading his thighs apart, Newt dove down and started licking and sucking his soft dick, his balls, his sensitive inner thighs.

“Newton - not so fast… OH!” Hermann jolted as Newt’s hot tongue lapped at his hole. “Oh, go on then, if you must,” he said, crossing his ankles behind Newt’s head and graciously letting him devour him. Newt pulled back, red-faced and sweating, and furiously slicked up his dick.

“Slowly, please, slowly,” Hermann gasped as he plunged into him. “Don’t just thrust your way in willy nilly. Have a care, why don’t you?”

“You’re the one clinging to me.”

“I do not_ cling.” _

“OK - whatever you say. You mind not clinging to me a little less? I can hardly move.”

Hermann loosened his legs around Newt’s waist. “Go on. Gently now, you brute.”

Newt fucked him hard regardless. Hermann lifted his hips to meet him, clawed red grooves down his shoulders and breathed hotly into the side of his neck.

The first time they had tried it, in Newton’s dark bedroom on a small bed that smelled like him, Newt had taken his time opening him up with his fingers and tongue, sucking red bruises on the inside of his thighs, cheek nestled against Hermann’s soft dick. Allowing himself to be taken completely into Newt’s canvassed arms, with open legs and throat exposed and quivering, Hermann felt something new bloom inside him, awkward and stumbling like a newborn deer. He gave himself willingly, wondering if Newt felt the same when he sank down on his dick or his fingers, hungry for sensation, the feeling of Hermann inside him, trusting implicitly with the deepest, most vulnerable part of his body. The intensity of his own emotions had scared him. The plaid curtains in Newton’s bedroom had been open a little, casting a line of yellow lamplight across the floor. He had whispered: “I’ve never done it like this before.”

“Oh - oh - OH! A little slower, deeper - that’s it,” Hermann moaned. His hands, tight on Newt’s hips, guided him in and out of him.

“M’gonna come,” Newt murmured.

“It’s not a race.”

“I can’t hold it. I’m gonna.”

“You’re going too fast - oh_ Newton.” _Hermann clawed at Newt’s back and held him tight as he came inside him. He liked to keep Newt close to him even after he had come, trapping him in a tangle of wiry limbs and feeling his dick slowly soften inside of him. Newt shuffled his weight onto his knees.

“You awful man,” Hermann said. “Did I say you could do that?”

“You like it.”

“That’s beside the point.”

He stroked the flyaway wisps of hair on the back of Newt’s head.

“I didn’t mean to blow up at you before,” Newt said.

“I know you didn’t.”

“It was just sex, y’know? Kinky sex. I-It wasn’t…”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“I really thought I could do it.”

“You don’t have to do anything. Just stay you.”

“I want to do freaky stuff with you. Wanna make you feel good. Hold me down, spank me if you wanna… I’d let you… Let you fuck me stupid…” He rocked against Hermann, stroking his thigh down to the knee and lifting it to hook around his waist. Hermann swatted him on the ass.

“Stop that,” he said. Lifting Newt’s chin, he held the oval-shaped remote in front of his nose. “You’re going to come from this, and nothing else.”

Newt’s eyes crossed comically behind his glasses as he stared at the device. Hermann gave his face an affectionate squeeze and held him there, appreciating the swell of his pushed-out pink lips and the plumpness of his cheeks. “Can you do that for me?”

Newt moaned dumbly in response.

“Good boy. I’m going to turn it up now.”

Newt followed Hermann’s fingers with his eyes as he circled the plus button on the remote, breathing so hard his lips began to tremble.

“Just a little more,” Hermann soothed. “How’s that?”

“Sh’good.” Newt started to moan in short bursts, quiet and far apart at first, but growing urgent, high-pitched and needy, until Hermann hushed him with a finger pressed to his lips.

“I wanna move,” Newt said.

“We’ve only just started.”

Newt reached back and started to fuck himself with the vibrator.

“You wanna fuck me?” he gasped in Hermann’s ear. “You wanna make me ride you ‘til you come? Wanna tie me up?”

“I think we should start with something smaller.”

“What would you do?”

“Clamps, maybe. Here…” He pinched Newt’s nipples one after the other, making him flinch. “And here. Would you like that?”

“Yes, yes, yesh… oh fuck, please fuck me, Hermann…”

“I should clamp that wagging tongue of yours as well.”

“_Yesss...” _

Hermann felt a stab of arousal at the thought of Newt spread out enthusiastically under him, pegs on his nipples bouncing up and down and Hermann’s fingers squeezing and tugging the crocodile clamp on his swollen tongue as he whimpered and drooled. He locked his legs around Newt’s middle and pulled him in tight as his body convulsed around his dick, and fumbled with the vibrator remote.

“Oh - oh - _oh, don’t turn it up!” _

“You seem to be enjoying it.”

“Wanna move, wanna move! Let me, let me, please.”

“Can you stay still a little longer?”

“Do it to me more,” Newt begged deliriously. “Do whatever you want. I need it, I need…”

He started to fuck Hermann gracelessly. With his free hand, Hermann grabbed the small, soft mound over Newt’s left hip and squeezed him hard. “Stay _ still,” _ he growled.

Newt’s eyes slid back under fluttering eyelids as he began to come, every inch of him trembling as Hermann held him firmly in place with a single hand. He drooled onto Hermann’s thumb.

“That was entirely undignified,” Hermann said. He stroked Newt’s hair with one hand while wiping the other on his shirt. “Are you alright?”

“I-I’m gonna pull out.”

“Of course. Treat me gently, now.”

Hermann gasped as Newt withdrew his half-hard dick. His face turned hot with colour as Newt dragged his fingers along the trickle of come that leaked between his cheeks and pushed it back deep into his hole.

“Feel good?” Newt asked breathlessly.

Hermann picked up a cushion and threw it in his face. Newt caught it in his hands and fell onto Hermann’s chest. He patted around until he found Hermann’s hand holding the remote and cranked the power down to low. He breathed deeply.

“Lean back, spread your legs,” Hermann whispered. With gentle hands, he laid Newt back and stroked his thighs apart. Newt always carried a haze of warmth around him that accumulated in the creases of his inner arms, the small rolls of his belly when he sat down and between his thighs. Hermann slid off the sofa and knelt before him, hands splayed on Newt’s hot skin, stretching slightly the rim of his hole around the flared base of the vibrator with his thumbs. He slid the toy out of him to the tip and held it, still humming, at the rim of his quivering hole. “Steady now,” he said, and popped it out of him, drawing a long, helpless shudder from deep inside of Newt that spread through his whole body. “Shh.” Hermann placed a possessive hand between his legs and slid one long finger inside him.

“It’s sore,” Newt whined.

“You’re one to talk, after the thrashing you gave me.”

“I bruise easily. I’m delicate.”

“Oh really?” Hermann laughed, flicking the tip of his finger over Newt’s abused prostate, making him shiver despite himself. He withdrew slowly, feeling Newt clench and cling to him. Newt reached out blindly, found Hermann’s hand and held it tight. Hermann turned Newt’s hand over and kissed the chemical burns on his palm.

“Dude,” Newt said, “you don’t have to do that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s gross.”

“I don’t think it is.”

Newt shuffled forward and curled himself around Hermann, burying his face in the crest of Hermann’s hair. Hermann, on his knees, snaked his arms around Newt’s waist. His cheek with its hint of stubble brushed against the soft folds of his belly.

“I enjoy this,” he said.

“The sex?”

“Yes. But this too.”

Newt helped him up and sat him down on the cushions beside him. Hermann wondered if they had disturbed his neighbours above him, the Polish legal secretary and the handsome medical student, and felt relieved that the rooms across the hall were unoccupied. After a while, he pulled on his trousers, padded barefoot into the kitchen and put the vegetarian lasagne Newt had brought over in a ceramic baking dish in the microwave. He split it in two with a knife and scooped one half into a bowl he had set out. Newt liked his pasta dishes swimming in hot sauce. Hermann poured a generous amount of _ Katie’s Sweet and Zesty Habanero Dressing _onto his food, leaving his own helping alone.

“Thanks hot stuff,” Newt, mercifully dressed again in his T-shirt and sweats, said with a wink as he handed it to him.

Hermann sat down on the wicker chair Newt had made fun of him for buying.

“Did I ever tell you,” he said, “about the first man I ever wanted?”

“Oh, is it story time?”

“We spent a long summer together in his parents’ ancestral home. There were away on business, mostly, though I met his mother briefly in a small chapel they kept on their estate. He was an academic, studying mathematics, but he loved to write poetry. He was embarrassed about it. He wouldn’t let anyone read them but me. I watched him for hours under a weeping willow in his garden, just writing. The sound of stream and the birds. He wrote about me. We drank a lot.”

“You had it bad, huh?”

“Yes. I… felt very much in love. He knew, though he never said it. We only made love once. I had never made love with anyone before.”

The strangeness of baring his soul over a bowl of vegetarian comfort food was not lost on Hermann. He continued: “He never spoke to me again. I was due to leave the following morning and when I woke up... he was gone. I looked for him in all our usual places. When I finally saw him again in our second year, he wouldn’t even look at me. For years I agonised over what I had done wrong. But there was nothing I could have done.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Newt asked.

“I wanted to. It’s very easy to presume we know everything about each other. We have… a history, after all. But I’ve never told this to anybody.”

“What was his name?”

“Andrew.”

“His loss.”

“I wonder what happened to him,” Hermann mused. There had been a kaiju attack in Germany some years ago. A lot of people were killed. He scooped up the last of his vegetarian lasagne with red peppers and aubergine and ate it. Newt, to his surprise, was an exceptional cook, and he hardly missed the meat, which had become difficult for most people to get hold of anyway. “Newton,” he said, “if I’m not mistaken, and you feel for me the same way I feel for you, I think perhaps we don’t have to keep hiding from each other. I think we should both stop waiting for things to go wrong.”

Newt had cut his lasagne sheets into ribbons with the edge of his fork and was stirring them around and around in his bowl. He had an orange splotch of chili sauce nestled in the corner of his mouth.

“Well,” Hermann said, “there you have it.”

He got up, went into the kitchen and started washing the dishes with unnecessary fuss and clatter.

“I got a job offer,” Newt said. “Shao Industries.”

“The arms dealer?”

Hermann returned to the living room, drying his hands on a plaid tea towel.

“The _world’s fastest growing _arms dealer.”

“How dreadful. I can’t think of anything worse.”

“Maybe I’ll go for it.”

“You? Don’t be ridiculous. Why on Earth would you do that? Unless you’re planning to sabotage the company from within, or use their technology for your own nefarious purposes.” Nothing would have surprised him.

“I know you got an invite from Oxford,” Newt said.

“You read my mail?”

“You left it open on your desk!” he cried.

Hermann had received it two weeks ago - a formal invitation from Oxford University’s department of engineering science to participate in a leading role working on the creation of a terraforming artificial intelligence system.

“It’s a great offer,” Newt said. “You should take it.”

“It’s a very long way away.”

“C’mon, man. It’s not like you’ve got much to stick around for.”

“Of course,” Hermann said coyly, “you wouldn’t miss me.”

“Nah, dude. You think I need you nagging me every day? I’d throw my underwear on the floor, eat the_ grossest _ take-out that’d clog your arteries just by looking at it. I’d have a blast.”

“Come with me.”

“What?”

“Come with me, to Oxford.”

“No, I - I heard what you said. But why?”

“It is among the most prestigious universities in the world, Newton. Isn’t it about time you started your next PhD?”

“I was thinking about zoology.”

“Why not languages? Learn some Yiddish for once, why don’t you.”

“Hey, I can’t risk my dad getting_ too _proud of me. He’s already been kicked out of three family reunions because he wouldn’t shut up about his _little pickle_.”

Newt’s father was infamously affectionate. Small and squat, with a greying mop of curly hair, he had swept Hermann into a bruising hug and kissed him on both cheeks the first time they had met. Newt had nudged him in the ribs and remarked, 'he likes you.'

He rose to his feet to meet Hermann in the middle of the rug.

“Live with me,” Hermann said.

“You gonna put a white line down the middle of our house too?”

“I expect I’ll find it difficult to adjust to well-mannered lab assistants who respect my personal boundaries and don’t use the shirt given to me by my late grandfather on the day of my university graduation to clean blood off their desk. I might even find it terribly dull. I’d be in desperate need of stimulation.”

“You want me around to stimulate you? I’m flattered Hermann, really.”

“Intellectual stimulation. You know quite well what I meant.”

“You don’t have to ask me twice, buddy, I’ll stimulate you all day. Keep me under your desk, I’ll stimulate you while you lecture about climate engineering.”

“I take it all back. I wouldn’t live with you if you were the last man on Earth. Begone with you.” He began to cuff Newt about the shoulders.

“Aw, Hermann, you’re breaking my heart here!” Newt laughed, dodging him.

“You’re impossible. I despise you. Come here.”

He seized Newt by the waist, kissed him and pressed their foreheads together. “If you don’t want to…"

“I want to,” Newt said. “I want to.”

“Newton, I…”

“S’OK. You don’t have to say it.”

“I want to. I don’t know how.”

“It’s weird. All these years, we’ve never…”

“I feel it wouldn’t be enough.”

“I’ll go with you,” Newt said determinedly. “I’ll follow you anywhere. Just try to get away from me.”

“Oh,” Hermann croaked.

“Too much? That thing with your graduation shirt was an accident, by the way. I thought it was a tablecloth.”

“Your perception astounds me.”

“When’re you putting your notice in?”

“I’ll give it a few months. Lord knows the students here could use some proper scientific insight. If I leave them alone for two minutes you’ll be filling their heads with all sorts of fantastical rubbish.”

“Oh_ sure, _can’t risk them listening to me,” Newt retorted, “they might actually try to apply some of that theory you love so much.”

“If they listened to_ you, _they’d blow the whole laboratory sky-high.”

The sky outside had grown dark with velvety purple clouds. Hermann poured himself half a gin and tonic and retreated with Newt to the sofa in silent agreement that any academic advice they could provide would far outweigh that of the reproachful conglomerate that occupied the opposite side of the university auditorium, as if in opposition, each day.

The invite from Oxford, set out very nicely on ivory-coloured paper, informed that Hermann’s tenure, if accepted, would begin in the September of 2026, by which time nobody with any morals would have made more than enough to get by. Newt rejected his offer from Shao Industries, which generously included a flashy apartment overlooking Beijing. The company’s founder, a 22-year-old billionaire with views to expand her family’s already sizeable influence and financial capital, did not pursue him. People who had lived for months in homeless shelters and hotel basements found new places to live as housing development boomed, or moved back into the empty husks of their old homes and picked up their water in large batches of plastic bottles from their nearest community centre. Raleigh returned to Hong Kong with gourmet dog food for Max and an awkwardly-presented bunch of tulips for Mako. The doctors Gottlieb and Geizsler co-authored a number of essays on kaiju, post-drift effects, and interpretations of ethics in science, though it would be several more years before Newt suggested hyphenating their names.

Hermann received a letter in cursive from the desk of his father in Bavaria, which he kept unopened between two history books for several weeks before ceremoniously burning it in a small pile of twisted-up paper on the concrete outside. Newt went vegan for six weeks before being lured back in with grilled cheese sandwiches and warm bread smothered in garlic butter. He wrote brashly about politics and was hotly criticised by right-leaning politicians. Hermann wrote in his defence, to much quieter fanfare. Life, despite everything, carried on.

**Author's Note:**

> I started this story a while ago, but anorexia has been kicking my ass so I only just found the energy to finish it. I was aiming for something a little more light-hearted, but it ended up with its fair share of seriousness anyway. I'm no comedian!
> 
> Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you have the time to leave a comment, please do! I'll do my best to reply to you in good time.


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